Google announced today that its rebranding its Google Shopping Express service while expanding the same day delivery service to new markets and merchants. While announcing the new shorter “Google Express” name, Google announced that the service is now available in Chicago, Boston, and Washington D.C. After first rolling out the service a year ago, it’s now accessible to more than 7 million people.

Google also noted some of the big merchants it’s added support for in recent months, including alcohol delivery in the Bay Area, making for a total of 16 new shopping options through Express:expand full story

It might not be as interesting as Google’s floating barge project that will see the company bring interactive technology showrooms to cities in the US, but Google has just opened a number of temporary retail locations leading into the holidays.

The pop-up locations are dubbed Google Winter Wonderlabs and Google’s new site describing the retail experience lists locations for New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and Sacramento.

Google is using the stores to let customers try out and purchase the Nexus 7, Chromebooks, and Chromecast (no mention of Google Glass), but it also has a “Snow globe” room that lets people create slo-mo videos with animated snow fall and “Play Zones” with various product demos set up. expand full story

Even with the background being sketchy, the math is in your favor NYCers. AT&T says it will cover 70 million customers in LTE by the end of the year. It is going to be hard to get there with their 15 markets if NYC isn’t one of them.

For good measure, AT&T was in NYC last week handing out to reviewers their impressive LTE smartphones the 4.5 inch HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy II Skyrocket. We’ve got both phones in hand but won’t be able to offer up a comprehensive review until NYC LTE is lit up (or I visit Silicon Valley for the holidays – whichever comes first)